Malwarebytes announces acquisitions, 100 million downloads and growth

San Jose, CA. (July 18, 2011) — Malwarebytes, the pioneer of the most advanced anti-malware protection and removal software in the industry, announced it has achieved significant momentum milestones including the broad acceptance of its anti-malware software within the data protection industry, a key corporate acquisition that expands its protection capabilities and the company’s expansion into the EMEA marketplace.

"This is a significant step in the growth of Malwarebytes," said Marcin Kleczynski (pronounced Kleh-chin-ski), Malwarebytes founder and CEO. "We acquired a key technology to expand our product features, expanded operations into the EMEA region, and our momentum is clearly growing with more than one million new users every month."

Malware, also known as malicious software, is one of the fastest-growing and most disruptive threats on the Internet today. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware works alongside antivirus programs and has become the de facto standard in the industry as evidenced by its recent accomplishment of achieving over 100 million downloads of its product and detecting and removing over 5 billion malware threats.

In addition to its product accomplishments, Malwarebytes recently completed the acquisition of hpHosts, a popular and trusted blacklist of malicious websites, ad servers and tracking servers. The acquisition ensures that Malwarebytes protects against the newest malevolent internet protocol (IP) addresses and harmful links while blocking the web servers being used to distribute the actual malware. Additionally, the blacklist is used as leverage to persuade Internet Service Providers to shut down active malware-producing servers, helping to curb the malware problem for the Internet community as a whole.

"We're passionate about what we do, and having the ability to not only protect consumer and corporate desktops but to actually stop malware from being distributed to millions of innocents underscores that we’re in this to make a difference, not just to make a living,” Kleczynski added. "hpHosts is well-known in the security realm and we’re pleased to be able to bring them onboard. hpHosts will continue to provide a free central repository of malicious sources for non-commercial use and now we can expand its influence even further by incorporating it into our anti-malware software platform."

In addition, the company recently hired Fernando Francisco to lead its EMEA operations. Francisco has over 10 years of direct experience in information security and technology, holding senior executive positions with several major PC security firms. As one of the early members of the Lavasoft Ad-Aware team, he helped established Ad Aware as one of the world's most downloaded, used, and distributed PC security products. He also served as VP of Channel Marketing for UK-based Prevx, recently acquired by Webroot. He was also with F-Secure where he expanded the company throughout Europe. Most recently he served as CEO of Returnil, a manufacturer of a virus, spyware, and malware protection program that features a virtual system restore sandbox feature that protects computers using untrusted applications and websites.

"Expanding our operations in EMEA is a natural growth step for us now so we can better accommodate the strong demand of our international customers and work more closely with our strategic EMEA partners,” said Marcus Chung, EVP & COO of Malwarebytes. “We are pleased to add Fernando’s considerable experience and track record in bringing new, innovative security products to market and to help us continue to drive both our opportunities and market presence worldwide."

"Malwarebytes is a young company with an extremely bright future. To have achieved such a great reputation primarily on word of mouth is amazing and only serves to highlight the strength of its solution," Francisco added. "I’m excited to have the honor of spearheading the company’s foray into the EMEA marketplace with product(s) and technologies that clearly offer a superior answer to today’s quickly growing malware problem."

ABOUT MALWAREBYTES ANTI-MALWARE

Malwarebytes Anti-Malware software is next generation technology for detecting and removing malware that even the most well-known antivirus and anti-malware applications fail to detect. Its advanced heuristic and behavioral scanning monitors every process in order to detect, destroy, and prevent malicious processes before they even start. It protects against even the most advanced malware programs including viruses, spyware, Trojans, rogues, keyloggers, password-stealers, dialers and more. Malwarebytes Anti-Malware comes in two versions: a free download which cleans non-commercial computers of malware on-demand as well as a PRO version which offers real-time malware protection, automated scanning, and automatic updating. The PRO version is also provided as a free 14 day trial to interested customers.

Source: Malwarebytes